Performances

  • Friday, Oct 18, 20247:30pm
  • Saturday, Oct 19, 20247:30pm

In the Wake

Oct 18 & 19, 2024

Anya Allegra Saugstad

Anya Allegra Saugstad is a dancer and choreographer based in Vancouver BC, on the unceeded territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh’ (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh (Ssleil-Waututh), and xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueum) First Nations.

Anya trained at ArtsUmbrella, and holds a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University. She also trained at The San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and in Gaga technique in San Francisco, Israel, and New York. Anya has toured with Action at a Distance with Vanessa Goodman through the USA, Canada, and Germany performing “Graveyards and Gardens” and “Core/Us” (2021-2023).

Anya Saugstad is the Artistic Director of a non profit dance organization called Furious Grace Dance Theatre.

Furious Grace / Anya Saugstad creates live, digital, and site adaptive performance works that foster space for emerging female and non binary artists to tell their stories through movement. Anya is interested in creating vigorous and highly physical movement to express stories that encompass strength, yearning, and urgency. She uses dance to access the wild animal states of being alive, and encourages her collaborators to show rawness and vulnerability as femme presenting bodies in performance. Anya’s site specific work Ocean Roaring, and Moss Body Breathes are inspired by nature, and she creates work that moves others to engage with the earth. These works both question human beings’ impact on mother nature, and tell stories about the climate crisis we face.

Anya has been a guest choreographer and created works for LamonDance, ArtsUmbrella, Simon Fraser University, Method Dance Company, and Coastal City Ballet, and upcoming Ballet Edmonton. Anya’s work has been presented through The Dance Deck (Belle Spirale), The Scotiabank Dance Center, Crimson Coast Dance, The Hearth, Dancing on the Edge Festival, The Rotary Center for the Arts, F-O-R-M film Festival, The San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Vines Art Festival. Anya has toured her work across BC and to Montreal Quebec. Anya Saugstad is the recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award for 2023/24.

Choreographer: Anya Allegra Saugstad

Anne Plamondon

Anne Plamondon is a choreographer, performer, teacher and curator.

Anne Plamondon is trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and the Banff Centre for the Arts before graduating from the École Supérieure de ballet du Québec in 1994. She immediately joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and performed several works from the classical repertoire, including those by George Balanchine and Fernand Nault.The following year, she left Quebec to continue her career with the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in Holland (1995 – 1998), and then with the Gulbenkian Ballet in Portugal (1998 – 2000). During this period, she performed the works of more than thirty choreographers including Jiří Kylián, Hans Van Manen, Johan Inger, Gideon Obarzanek, Angelin Preljocaj and Itzik Galili. She also creates leading roles in works by Rui Horta, Patrick Delcroix and Pieter de Ruiter – as well as in the acclaimed hit Sad Case, by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, choreographers in residence at Nederlands Dans Theater.

After more than 20 years as a performer on international stages, she made her debut as a choreographer in 2012. With the complicity of theater director Marie Brassard, she created her first two solos The Same Eyes as Yours (2012) and Night Mechanics (2017). In 2018, she founded Anne Plamondon Productions in order to carry out her own creative projects and generate new artistic collaborations. Since then, Anne has multiplied her collaborations with important institutions such as the Fall for Dance North Festival in Toronto where she creates the duet Counter Cantor (2018) with the renowned choreographer Emma Portner, as well as Fiddle Embrace (2018), a piece for eighteen students of the Ryerson School of Dance. She has also created works for Alberta Ballet and Arts Umbrella Dance in Vancouver. In the summer of 2020, she choreographs and performs in the short film Espaces vitaux (semi-finalist at the Paris Play Festival), which is part of the project “Une solitude partagée” initiated by the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur.

In 2021, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal invited her to choreograph Vanishing Mélodies, a large-scale piece set to the music of Patrick Watson, alongside Brazilian choreographer Juliano Nuñes. The following year, after several postponements due to the Covid-19 pandemic, she presented and performed Only You (2020), her latest duet with dancer James Gregg, at Usine C, the National Arts Centre and Harbourfront Centre, to finally tour the show in Quebec in Fall 2022.

Choreographer: Anne Plamondon